It requires to be
conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can
appreciate. These winged thoughts are like birds, and will not
be handled; even hens will not let you touch them like
quadrupeds. Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to a
man as his own thoughts.
To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb and
conform to the ways of the world. Genius is the worst of lumber,
if the poet would float upon the breeze of popularity. The bird
of paradise is obliged constantly to fly against the wind, lest
its gay trappings, pressing close to its body, impede its free
movements.
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of
the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest
obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind
changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from
all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can
never reach.
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar
institutions and edicts for his defence, but the toughest son of
earth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance
his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the
worshippers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer
work of the world.
